Note: Pressing cancel on the briefing screen will attempt to load the StarCraft Mass Recall map loader. We're working on a loader of our own, but for now please...don't click that button.

To play:

Open Antioch1-1.SC2Map in the editor. Press the Test Document button.

If you are interested in helping with this project, please see the bottom of this post.

What is this?

This is the alpha release of a StarCraft 2 remake of the seminal StarCraft custom campaign known as the Antioch Chronicles. This project is a high-fidelity reproduction of the original campaign with few enhancements taking advantage of the StarCraft 2 editor.

This version contains only Episode 1 of the campaign. It uses the StarCraft: Mass Recall mod, which the creators were generous enough to allow us to use.

What is the Antioch Chronicles?

In 1998, not long after StarCraft was released, a mapmaker calling himself Auspex Turmalis (Ruben Moreno) released episode 1 of a custom campaign that he called The Antioch Chronicles. The campaign featured custom audio, perhaps most notable for how well Auspex reproduced the Protoss audio effects. Also impressive was the fact that Auspex recorded all of the character voices himself.

Episode 2 was released in 1999. For the second campaign, creative duties were split between Auspex and Zeus Legion (Eric Dieter), with additional voice support acting by Ytse-Jam (Juan Mantilla) and Macbeth (Eric Ladd). By the release of Episode 2, the Antioch Chronicles had gathered a large and active fan base.

Unfortunately, a promised Episode 3 never came to fruition. Still, the first two episodes did much to shape the early StarCraft modding community and remain in the popular conscious fifteen years later. For more information about the Antioch Chronicles, visit http://antioch.snow-fall.com/wiki.pl?Th ... Chronicles .

Why are you doing this?

The project founders are all longstanding members of the Antioch Chronicles fan community, which never really died out, despite the campaign's cancellation. Last month, an idle forum thread about wanting the replay the Antioch Chronicles drew a surprising amount of attention for our tiny forum and within days we'd launched the project.

What's next?

Episode 2 is approximately 80% done, so we hope to have that in alpha in the next couple of weeks. After we have both episodes released, we'll gather community feedback and polish the maps accordingly.

Once we're satisfied with the state of the maps, we plan to plan to begin phase 2, where we'll bring the campaign up to 2015 standards. This includes but is not limited to giving the heroes special powers, tightening up and combining maps, and creating actual cutscenes.

Can I help?

We could definitely use some help. The easiest thing you can do is to download the campaign and play through it, giving us as much feedback as you'd like. Balance feedback is especially welcome, as these maps haven't really been play tested in that way. If you run into trouble, typing "power overwhelming" in the chat will enable god mode for your current units and "show me the money" will give you 10,000 credits and gas. If a map is just totally broken, please just move onto the next one. We'll try to get any critical bugs patched ASAP.

If you'd like to join the team, we'd be happy to have you as long as you can make a honest time commitment to the project—it doesn't need to be a lot of time, we just need to know what we can count on you for. Here's what we could use help with:

Polishing the terrain on the existing maps.

Adding special effects to the maps (specifically, some explosions).

Advanced trigger editing to spice up the maps.

AI work to make the enemies more interesting (it's mostly just attack waves now).

Creating new maps for phase 2 (where necessary).

Creating cutscenes.

Getting talking portraits set up.

Adding powers to hero units.

Creating artwork for the logo, loading screens, map loader, and more.

Anything else you want to offer.

Please send me a private message if you're interested in joining the team.

Who are you?

Team Antioch was founded by four people: Alevice, DarkTZeratul, dine, and Lucid Iguana. We've known each other for about a decade. Prior to this project, only Alevice had any experience in the editor, but we've proven to be quick studies. We've also been recently joined by ace terrainer wargirlwargirl, whose work has been featured on the Blizzard Arcade.

I remember Alevice showing me some of his terrain a few years ago. His work is probably some of the best I've seen for the game still. Can't go wrong with him helping you out. I see the maps are lacking detailing but they are a good start. Just don't overdo the detail when you get to it. That's something most existing maps are terrible for.

I released some simple explosion particles in the Apex F resource thread a little while ago, as well as a a bunch of textures that can be used for flipbooks in other effects.

Depending on what you want to do with AI, attack waves might be all you need. Tactical AI is something only an extremely small number of people knew, and all of them have quit afaik. If you want something more like what we were making in Apex F (actual AI), well, you probably won't manage to make it perform any good in sc2's engine. So, it's either bullies and waves or bust with this game, unfortunately.

Keep dreaming mahboi. Thanks for the kind words man. I have only worked full on two terrains admittedly, one of them still a WIP, and layout'd like other three. Time and a slightly outdated rig dont help much to get more shit done.

We are aiming for the most part to keep the same difficulty level on the original campaign, while providing more interesting gimmicks and setups. I have dabbled on Tactical AI before, and while it could definitely spruce up a couple of levels (in particular commando missions, which are a bit lacking on the original campaign), I think a full scale AI might not be necessary for our goals.

I will not speak for the team atm, but I believe that given our skill/availabilty limitations, the challenge could come up from other aspects, like soft time limits based on resource scarcity, unfriendly terrain layouts for exploiting defenses, limited techtrees (that make sense within the context of the level), and multiple bases/adversaries where applicable.

Yeah, I experimented a lot with out of ordinary base layouts for my missions. I don't know how closely you're following the source material, but abusing waypoints and drop attacks can make use of weirder layouts and add a little bit of flair to otherwise simple B&D setups. I had a map where you had three chokes into your main platform and it had its own low-ground expansions, so those were going to be your primary focus point, but drops would come in from one of the adjacent, otherwise inaccessible areas in your platform, and occassionally you'd get doom dropped in late-game as well.

One of the main things for difficulty is to keep enemy unit counts increasing and their tech increasing as time goes on. Most official campaigns sort of peter out in scaling 5-10 minutes in, so once you establish your defense it's nearly impossible to lose. In Apex H I scaled the AI so it would always look for very high unit counts, but the limiting factor would be how many structures it had (more time it went on - the more structures it had - the more units it could produce, etc.)

Soft "enrage" mechanics are those I favor more over hard set limits. Things that offer some wiggle room for player creativity but greatly increase difficulty the more they amount.

wibod wrote:Just the other day I wondering if Alevice had been beheaded by the cartels, good to know that is not the case.

While I am aware that there is not ill will on your message, I have had direct relatives and acquaintances affected by it and i really cant appreciate the Comment per se.

No offense taken per se, but I will kindly ask to not do so again please

Back to the topic at hand.

We are long term aiming to modernize quite a few things that have not aged that well, but anything that requires a big time investment would dfinitely be put in the backburner if it halts overall development and soft target dates. And we really havent reached a consensu as to what feature to modernize and which ones to keep. We re still bound by the original campaign assets (specifically voice acting, and we lack the means to effectively reproduce the work of the original actors to have some seamless transitions between stages and some narrative dissonances).

The AI escalation would be ideal to a degree, within limits (due to our current capabilities and keeping a certain degree of integrity - it has to keep into consideration SC tech trees for episode one and bw techs for ep 2, plus the intent of the original map). We are long term aiming to give heroes a more critical support role given the b&d restrictions, encouraging players to not have them hidden until turtled enough, but rather actually allowing to keep more manageable levels of difficulty by daring to set them on the fire line in spite of the implied risks.

Yeah... heroes are a tough one. I was just going to make heroes AI-controlled entirely in my campaign, but it would have needed really good tactical AI so they actually contributed. But that also fit more into my lore and probably wouldn't be a reasonable alternative for most people. Whatever you do, don't have free revives like hots.

Lavarinth wrote:@Lucid Iguana, I have to admit I'm impressed for a draft.

How does the "campaign" get initiated within StarCraft II? Do maps link? And so on.

We have a map file called Antioch Campaign Launcher. It lets you pick what map to play. At the end of each map, you're given the option to quit, return to the chooser, or go to the next map. You can see it at the beginning of Jayborino's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y88waAA ... e=youtu.be .

I don't know what extent of voice acting the original project had as I never played much of it past the beginning, but if you are ever looking to add voice acting, I can probably deliver depending on what it is. I guess that may be more applicable if you intend to create Episode 3.

IskatuMesk wrote:I don't know what extent of voice acting the original project had as I never played much of it past the beginning, but if you are ever looking to add voice acting, I can probably deliver depending on what it is. I guess that may be more applicable if you intend to create Episode 3.